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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-63

Last update of repository: 17 March 2020

Gosudarstvennyi muzei istorii rossiiskoi literatury imeni V.I. Dalia (GMIRLI)


Previous names
1934–2017   Gosudarstvennyi literaturnyi muzei (GLM)
[State Literary Museum]
1933–1934   Tsentral'nyi muzei khudozhestvennoi literatury, kritiki i publitsistiki
[Central Museum of Literature, Criticism, and Publicistic Writings]
1921–1933   Literaturnyi muzei pri Biblioteke im. V.I. Lenina
[Literary Museum under the V.I. Lenin Public Library]
History
The museum began its acquisition activities with a 1931 decree establishing a Commission to Prepare and Organize the Central Literary Museum, under the direction of the Bolshevik intellectual leader, Vladimir D. Bonch-Bruevich. The Central Museum of Literature, Criticism, and Publicistic Writings was established in 1933. In 1934 that museum was combined with the collections of the former Literary Museum under the Lenin Public Library (and its predecessors, now RGB, see G–1)—a special auxiliary library used for the collection of literary manuscripts and personal papers—to form the State Literary Museum (GLM). The combined museum was then housed in a building opposite the Lenin Library, which was later the Kalinin Museum (and later a branch of the Museum of Revolution, now State Central Museum of the Contemporary History of Russia—H–4). Continuing under the direction of Bonch-Bruevich, during the 1930s, GLM became one of the largest and best stocked repositories of literary manuscript materials in the Soviet Union, with its unique collections of materials relating to Russian and foreign literature, including many originals and copies of archival Rossica from abroad—totalling some 3,000,000 archival documents, 100,000 units of graphic materials, and over 130,000 books. And at the same time, the museum became a major center of scholarly research, with several important series of archival publications and catalogues.
        With the formation of the Central State Literary Archive—TsGLA (now RGALI—B–7) in 1941, however, virtually all of the GLM archival holdings were transferred to state archival custody to form the new repository. The personal papers of A.M. Gor'kii had previously been transferred to the Gor'kii Archive in the Institute of World Literature (IMLI AN SSSR—E–8), the Pushkin archival materials had been transferred to Pushkinskii Dom in Leningrad (IRLI— E–28), and the Tolstoi materials to the State Tolstoi Museum (H–65). Thus, by the outbreak of the Second World War, GLM was left with only its graphic materials and book holdings, while its official status and staff in subsequent years remained on uncertain ground.
        Nevertheless, during the war and especially the postwar years, the Literary Museum, still under the direction of Bonch-Bruevich, started replenishing its manuscript holdings with an active collecting program. Among other early postwar receipts of particular significance, in 1951 the museum received approximately 5,000 literary manuscripts and related documents from internal security sources, namely some of those seized from repressed writers and other literary figures. Continuing during the 1950s and 1960s, GLM again came into prominence for significant literary manuscripts and documentary materials, but these never reached the magnitude of its prewar collections. By the 1970s, the museum was spread out in some seventeen different buildings in Moscow, which by 1995 had grown to twenty. Its main exhibits for Russian literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were in that time housed in the Naryshkin Palace of the Vysoko-Petrovskii Monastery, which also housed the administrative offices of the museum. The exhibits of Soviet-period literature were concentrated in the house of the former Ostroukhov Gallery.
        In April 2017 the State Literary Museum was renamed the V.I. Dal' State Museum of the History of Russian Literature (GMIRLI). In 2019 the Museum moved to a renovated building on Zubovsky Boulevard—House of Liuboshchinskie-Vernadskie (Dom Liuboshchinskikh-Vernadskikh), which is now the main administrative building of the Museum (https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-lyub...).
        In addition to the Manuscript Division, which existed since the 1930s (during the period after 1941, it had the status of a sector), a Photograph Sector (now Fototeka) was formed in 1944, and a Sound Recordings Division in 1970. The separate Folklore Archive had been established in 1932, but became a sector when it lost most of its holdings in 1941.
        The museum now has twelve branches—with the formal status of divisions (otdely) of the museum. Many of them have some original documents, including photographic materials, on display among their exhibits, but archival materials are held only in the specially designated GLM divisions described below. Brief webpages have been launched for all of these branch museums:
                (1) The A.P. Chekhov House-Museum (Dom-muzei A.P. Chekhova), founded in 1954, in the house where the writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) lived from 1886 to 1890. (103001, Moscow, ul. Sadovo-Kudrinskaia, 6; tel. +7 495 691-61-54, +7 495 691-38-37; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M309).
                (2) The A.I. Herzen House-Museum (Dom-muzei A.I. Gertsena), founded in 1976, in the house where the socialist thinker and publicist Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen (Gertsen) (1812–1870) lived from 1843 to 1846, and which has recently been designated an architectural landmark of the early nineteenth century. (121002, Moscow, per. Sivtsev Vrazhek, 27; tel. +7 499 241-58-59; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M307).
                (3) The M.Iu. Lermontov House-Museum (Dom-muzei M.Iu. Lermontova), founded in 1981, in the house where the poet and novelist Mikhail Iur'evich Lermontov (1814–1841) lived from 1829 to 1832. (121069, Moscow, ul. Malaia Molchanovka, 2; tel. +7 495 691-52-98, +7 495 691-18-60; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M313.
                (4) The F.M. Dostoevskii Apartment-Museum (Muzei-kvartira F.M. Dostoevskogo), founded in 1928, in the house where the writer Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevskii (1822–1881) was born and lived until the age of sixteen, also preserves part of the family library. (103030, Moscow, ul. Dostoevskogo, 2; tel. +7 495 681-10-85; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/muzey-kv...; http://www.museum.ru/M403).
                (5) The A.N. Tolstoi Apartment-Museum (Muzei-kvartira A.N. Tolstogo), opened in 1987, in the house in which the writer Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1883–1945) lived during the last period of his life. The museum exhibits documents and memorabilia and also preserves part of Tolstoi’s library. The building, designed by the architect F.O. Shekhtel' (1903), has been designated an architectural landmark. (103001, Moscow, ul. Spiridonovka [formerly Alekseia Tolstogo], 2/6; tel. +7 495 690-09-56; e-mail: [email protected]; webpage: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/muzey-kv...; http://www.museum.ru/M399).
                (6) The A.V. Lunacharskii Memorial Cabinet (Memorial'nyi kabinet A.V. Lunacharskogo), opened in 1964, in the house in which the Bolshevik literary critic and first Commissar of Education, Anatolii Vasil'evich Lunacharskii (1873–1933) lived during the last period of his life (1923–1933). The small museum preserves Lunacharskii’s working study and has other memorial exhibits with documents, pictures, and memorabilia. (121002, Moscow, Denezhnyi per. [formerly ul. Vesnina], 9/5; tel. +7 499 241-88-73; webpages: http://www.museum.ru/M327; temporarily closed for reconstruction).
                (7) The B.L. Pasternak House-Museum (Dom-muzei B.L. Pasternaka), founded in 1990 in the dacha where the writer Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890–1960) lived, has memorial exhibits reflecting the time of Pasternak’s life there. (142783, Moscow Oblast, pos. Peredelkino, ul. Serafimovicha, 3; tel. +7 495 934-51-75; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M449).
                (8) The K.I. Chukovskii Memorial Museum (Memorial'nyi muzei K.I. Chukovskogo), founded in 1995 in the dacha of the writer Kornei Ivanovich Chukovskii (1882–1969), portrays the author’s life there from 1939–1969. (142783, Moscow Oblast, pos. Peredelkino, ul. Serafimovicha, 3; tel. +7 495 593-26-70; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M489).
                (9) The Museum of Silver-Age Literature (V.Ia. Briusov House) (Muzei Serebrianogo veka [Dom V.Ia. Briusova]), preserves the memorial study of Valerii Iakovlevich Briusov (1873–1924) and part of his library. The museum was earlier a branch of the V.V. Maiakovskii Museum (H–70). (129010, Moscow, prosp. Mira [formerly 1-ia Meshchanskaia ul.], 30; tel. +7 495 680-86-83; e-mail: [email protected], webpages: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/muzey-se...; http://www.museum.ru/M1945).
                (10) The M.M. Prishvin House-Museum (Dom-muzei M.M. Prishvina), founded in 1980, where the writer and naturalist Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (1873–1954) lived. (143091, Moscow Oblast, Odintsovskii raion, pos. Dunino, 2; tel. +7 495 992-18-60, +7 495 992-66-43, +7 926 014-66-21; e-mail: [email protected]; webpages: http://www.prishvin.ru/; https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muze...; http://www.museum.ru/M490).
                (11) The Il'ia Ostroukhov House—Exhibition Hall (Dom I.S. Ostroukhova—Vystavochnye zaly), located in the historic home of the painter and collector Il'ia Semenovich Ostroukhov (1858–1929), which formerly housed the Ostroukhov Gallery, came under the jurisdiction of GLM in 1983 and is used for various exhibits (121069, Moscow, Trubnikovskii per., 17; tel. +7 495 695-46-18; webpage: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-i-s-...).
                (12) Information and Cultural Center “Museum of A.I. Solzhenitsyn” (Informatsionno-kul'turnyi tsentr “Muzei A.I. Solzhenitsyna”), opened in 2015 in Kislovodsk (357700, Stavropol Krai, Kislovodsk, ul. Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna, 3; tel. +7 985 850-03-84; e-mail: [email protected]; webpage: https://goslitmuz.ru/museums/informat...


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